This Opinion Just In…
NEW YORK — They are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
Arizona Senator John McCain and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin are poised to rescue the GOP’s core commitment to limited government. Alas, it has been stomped to pieces by top Republicans such as President Bush, former House leaders Dennis Hastert and Tom DeLay, Senate GOP chief Mitch McConnell, and his predecessor, Bill Frist.
After winning the White House and Congress in 2001, Republicans aggressively slashed taxes. Beyond so-called “tax cuts for the rich,” which irritate Democrats like Barack Obama, Republicans reduced the bottom rate from 15 percent to 10, slicing lower-income taxpayers’ levies by one third. McCain supported most of these cuts but opposed others. He now pledges to make Bush’s tax cuts permanent and let every American choose between today’s impenetrable, 67,204-page tax code and an optional, flatter tax, perhaps at 25 and 15 percent rates.
While Republicans appropriately removed the boots from taxpayers’ necks, they idiotically launched an entitlement-busting, pork-barreling spend-o-rama that drained the Treasury and discarded Republicans’ hard-earned reputation for fiscal restraint.
Between 2000 and 2006 — the year Republicans frittered away their Congressional majority — federal discretionary spending swelled 40 percent after inflation, from $762 billion to $1.067 trillion. Even subtracting defense and homeland security, such spending accelerated 27 percent.
Bush and most Congressional Republicans enacted the 2002 farm bailout (cost: $190 billion), the 2003 Medicare drug entitlement ($783 billion through 2018; $8.4 trillion through 2082), and 2005’s highway bill ($286 billion). McCain wisely voted no, no, and no.
Meanwhile, Citizens Against Government Waste calculates, pork barrel projects ballooned from 4,326 earmarks worth $17.7 billion in 2000, under Democrats, to 9,963 boondoggles worth $29 billion in 2006, under Republicans. (Earmarks peaked at 13,997 in 2005.) John McCain condemns such gluttony and never has requested an earmark.
“We spent $3 million of your money to study the DNA of bears in Montana,” McCain said August 16 at California’s Saddleback Church. “I don’t know if that was a paternity issue or a criminal issue, but the point is it was $3 million of your money.”
The Right understandably rebelled in 2005 when Tom DeLay boasted about spending: “After 11 years of Republican majority, we’ve pared it down pretty good.”
“While others offer empty rhetoric on spending restraint,” says Heritage Foundation fiscal analyst Brian Riedl, “Senator McCain has been a lonely voice for fiscal responsibility in a free-spending Congress.”
For her part, Palin won a seat on Wasilla’s City Council in 1992 by opposing tax increases. She defeated a three-term incumbent for mayor, then cut taxes on property, business inventories, and aircraft — a not uncommon asset in America’s vastest state.
Palin eventually torpedoed incumbent liberal Frank Murkowski in the GOP’s gubernatorial primary, and then sank former two-term Democratic governor Tony Knowles.
Governor Palin sold via eBay a $2,692,600 Westwind II jet that Murkowski bought with taxpayer funds. “The purchase of the jet was impractical and unwise, and it’s time to get rid of it,” Palin said in December 2006. “In the meantime, I am keeping my promise not to set foot on the jet.”
Palin blew the whistle on oil commissioner Randy Ruedrich and attorney general Gregg Renkes, two Republicans who later paid a fine and resigned, respectively, for ethical violations. Palin signed a bill last year that, among other things, mandates ethics training for legislators and lobbyists, requires public officials to report bribery, and prohibits politicians from swapping votes for campaign cash.
Palin endorsed Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell — GOP primary opponent to Alaska’s pork-scented, scandal-scarred Republican Congressman, Don Young. She also has locked antlers with Senator Ted Stevens, whose federal corruption trial begins in October. As Amy Goldstein and Michael Shear wrote in August 30’s Washington Post, Palin “has repeatedly thwarted Stevens’s and Young’s interests and, at times, challenged their candidates — including their children.”
Palin’s first budget requested a 6.8 percent expenditure reduction. Her second proposed a 7.8 percent cut. When legislators spent even more, she could have holstered her veto pen, as Bush did for six years. Instead, Palin said, she exercised “nearly half a billion dollars in vetoes.”
“I told the Congress, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ for that Bridge to Nowhere,” Palin said in Wednesday night’s barn-burner at the GOP National Convention. “If our state wanted a bridge, we’d build it ourselves.”
“She has proposed restraint in state spending, which is impressive given the huge, oil-fueled surpluses the state is currently enjoying,” says Cato Institute scholar Chris Edwards. He called her gubernatorial tax record “uninspiring,” given her tax hike on oil companies and small state-level tax cuts, such as a one-year, $40 million suspension of state fuel taxes. Nevertheless, Palin enjoys an 86 percent approval rating.
Imperfections aside, these nominees offer a dramatic departure from the apostasy that has embarrassed the GOP, betrayed its base, and surrendered control of Congress, proving that bad policy equals bad politics. Together, John McCain and Sarah Palin will aim an urgently needed fire hose into the clogged gutter that is today’s national Republican Party.
New York commentator Deroy Murdock is a columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.
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written by Andrew Roman , September 04, 2008
Referencing, in part, an article you wrote last week, Mr. Murdock, and coupling it with your offering today, it is astoundingly clear to me that Governor Palin is the right choice to be John McCain's running mate. There are a multitude of reasons for this, in my humble opinion, but I'm focusing specifically on the fiscal. She complements Senator McCain extremely well. Her record is impressively solid and something to be proud of.
One of the reasons I opposed the selection of Mitt Romney as McCain's running mate, for example, as you addressed in your article last week (and with which I agreed whole-heatedly) was his questionable record as a fiscal conservative. To try and debate the merits of smaller government and reduced spending with Mitt Romney as the running mate would have been akin to the cat addressing a canary convention on the benefits of sturdier cages.
It wouldn't have fared well for our side.
Sarah Palin's record, by contrast, is one of a crusader against wasteful spending. Her positions are clear and strong. To propose restraint in spending, when surpluses exist, is certainly something to sing about around the campfire. It is admirable, extremely disciplined and principled.
However, her crusader-like spirit against the oil companies, admittedly, may come under some attack from folks like me. I just happen to be one of those people that does NOT believe the oil companies are the greatest evil since the final five seasons of M*A*S*H hit the air.
Call me silly.
Tax hikes against the oil companies don't exactly send any shivers down my spine, and there could be some potential problems down the road should she happen to change her position on the national stage. Indeed, as you write (quoting Chris Edwards), those tax hikes were "uninspiring."
Still, in total, I love the Sarah Palin pick.
If I wanted someone in office who I agreed with one hundred percent of the time, I'd run myself.
Andy Roman
Brooklyn, NY
written by Jim Kely , September 09, 2008
Here are the facts of the Presidential Election......(Great sources)
Short and to the point.
McCain MUST win Pennsylvania , Michigan & Ohio.
If McCain does that he wins no matter what.
(Even losing Florida, which he does not)
If he McCain loses ONE of those three States it becomes a very, very long night. (Pick off's become important)
No other polls matter but this scenario. (Pollster.com)
And yes due to migration of the "Lefties aka Liberals" of California into the Mountain States (Former Cowboy States) IE. New Mexico, Montana, Dakota's & Colorado the rules have changed.
Jim Kelly - NY Conservative Campaigns
written by alice Lemos , September 09, 2008
has pulled resources out of Ohio and I think he has written off Georgia and North Carolina because of Governor Palin. (He had been making plays for those two Red States). However, Virginiia, which unfortunately has many transplanted New Yorkers (liberals) is tricky as is Colorado (same reason). When New Yorkers move to other states, frequently complaining about high taxes, they take their terrible voting patterns with them.
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